Bloody Mary (2007)

~Cast~

Kim Tyler....................Natalie

Matt Borlenghi.............Bobby

Amber Borycki............Tabitha

Jaason Simmons...........Dr. Daniels

Eero Johnson...............Railroad

Directed by..................Richard Valentine

My Rating:

    "I BELIEVE in Mary...." Over acting courtesy of a Bad Actress

So once again I embark on another "URBAN LEGEND" horror film, this one being based off of the "Bloody Mary" tale that we all know from childhood. However, for those of you who have lived under a rock for the past several years, it goes like this: If you go up to a mirror and say "Bloody Mary" 3 times in a row she will appear and kill you. Simple enough, so why can't we seem to get a good enough horror film BASED off that simple legend. URBAN LEGENDS 3 fucked that up to the point of no return with its ludicrous twist on the old legend. CANDYMAN did it but had to switch the female to a pissed off black man with a hook for a hand. So how does Richard Valentine's incarnation of the ever popular urban legend fair? Not very well in my opinion. When I sat down, I knew NOT to expect anything of the high budget caliber or even something that would leave me shaking in my long johns (if I had them), but I at least expected to see something that didn't bore me to tears for crying out loud. First off, the movie starts off with a HORRID death scene that is all off screen and shows NOTHING aside from blood spatter here and there. Along with that we get some god awful acting. The movie begins to pick itself up in the 30 minute mark but loses itself again shortly afterward. However, I am getting ahead of myself. Let's get to the story shall we?

    We start off with a group of psychiatric nurses who are playing a BLOODY MARY game with the new girl (I think she is the new girl) Nicole, and the game consists of this: Nicole must venture into the tunnels underneath the asylum and follow the arrows to a mirror where she must say the words "I believe in Bloody Mary" several times...NAKED. Let's say I thought the movie was off to a good start. What happens next is MARY of course appears and kills poor Nicole. All of the girls freak out except for Tabitha who seems to be the ringleader of the group. Tabitha begins to cover everything up and denies everything to the police. When Nicole's Ex-boyfriend or the other girls get out of line, she brings them to MARY to be sacrificed. So now you have the basic plot, anyone who could, should, or would possibly be able to move this fucking plot forward, gets killed off.

    If the acting wasn't bad enough, most of the kills are off screen and the things we do see are the aftermath of slashes, gashes, and eye gouging. That's it, nothing cool to even mention in the gore section or anything. The movie isn't all bad though, at the 30 minute mark the film did pick up and begin to go onto a nice story line that was intriguing and interesting. Only problem is, they go off from it and then all it becomes is more bad acting and that’s it. I didn't hate this movie, but I didn't like it all that much either. It doesn't have a lasting effect on the viewer. Even as I write this I am forgetting HALF the movie, which is pretty uncommon for me. Another thing that made me not be able to get into this movie is the fact that the 2 stars look like Christopher Knight and Adrienne Curry from MY FAIR BRADY! I felt like I was watching a VH1 movie for crying out loud and couldn't get over the fact that we have 2 look-a-likes in this film.

    Acting wise, BLOODY MARY sports that "So bad, it's painful" kind of acting where the sound of the actors voices, sends chills up and down your spine. Kim Tyler, who plays Natalie, was a lesser of the evils. She did an okay job, but the scenes she shares with Matt Borlenghi are lacking so much chemistry that it feels like they are both just reciting lines from the script. Which is how the acting felt from almost everyone, like they used the audition tapes as the actual footage to avoid paying the actors. Matt plays Bobby the detective who of course doesn't believe anything that is going on until it hits him in the face. He was okay but every time he appeared on screen I couldn't stop hearing the BRADY BUNCH theme song in my head. Amber Borycki played Tabitha and while she looked nice, she sure as hell didn't sound nice. I'm sorry but her entire performance is so monotone and so bad that every time she had a scene, even the extra's outshined her. It was really bad especially during the first 30 minutes of this movie! Jason Simmons plays Dr. Daniels and he actually did a pretty good job (compared to everyone else) and that being said, I wish he had more screen time. The one that outshined everyone didn't even have any lines though (not trying to be funny here). The best one in this movie was Eero Johnson who played the crazy mental patient RAILROAD. This guy was great from his walk to the way he groaned and grunted. He stole the scene every time he was on. I kept on saying, this guy is acting the pants off of everyone else and he ISNT EVEN TALKING! He was great! I wish they made him the star of this film instead of the other people! GREAT JOB MR. JOHNSON! Directing wise, I will admit Mr. Valentine shows some decent shots with the low budget he had. The main problem I saw was there were too many nods to EVIL DEAD (shots looking up from the cellar, the necklace, etc) and it felt almost like they were being copied and not paid homage to. That being said, the film does feel like it was shot with only one camera and that they didn't have enough money to do a second take. Negatives aside, the film has a certain feel to it which was nice and I wouldn't mind seeing Valentine having some more money to play around with on his next film.

    Gore wise this movie isn't as gory as it wants to be and it shows big time. It wants to have some nice gory deaths and you can tell they weren't able to have them. What we get though is blood spatter on the walls and floors, shards of glass and on naked girls, a naked man covered in shards of glass along with one big shard in the stomach, several after shots of empty eyeball sockets, jars of eyeballs, a hammer to the head, and that’s about it from what I remember. Nudity wise...it's happy hour for us men here! Kim Tyler shows off her melons along with Amber Borycki showing her lovely breasts and her firm behind. We also get Jessica Lous (Nicole) showing us her round bosoms and I believe that is it for us. The ladies were not forgotten, they get Cory Monteith in his birthday suit showing them several butt shots...but hey, we get 3 hot girls showing us boobs so it's all good!

    I say, BLOODY MARY seems to be a no-brainer in terms of becoming a good horror film. People go into the bathroom, say her name, and are killed from it. It's afterward when these films go off on tangents, trying to be creative and original that the story falls flat. I wish someone would make a BLOODY MARY movie without all the twists, secret reasons, and other bullshit that is always put into it. This version of BLOODY MARY isn't something that you will remember later on. The film is forgettable, boring, and has some really bad acting with a clichéd ending that asks the question "Why didn't anyone think of doing that before?" Half the side plots are never resolved "Why did Tabitha give Natalie that necklace?" "Why was Tabitha so obsessed with bringing Mary back?" "Who the fuck was that whacko in the cell with the huge boils on his face?" "How is it, that in a modern day insane asylum, nobody would think to check the video cameras for footage when people start disappearing? Furthermore, why is it that only Nicole is sought after by her sister, but when other people go missing, nobody even bats an eye?"  So to sum things up, this is one film I won't find myself re-watching anytime soon. Instead of scaring us like when we were children, BLOODY MARY makes this urban legend comical and lame.

Special Guest Reviewer:

"What I don't get is, if BLOODY MARY is supposed to appear and kill everyone that says her name, how did the one chick conjure her up and NOT get killed?"

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